Portable electronic devices and tokens have become an integrated part of the regular day to day user experience. There is a wide variety of common portable and handheld devices that users have in their possession including communication, business and entertaining devices such as cell phones, music players, digital cameras, smart cards, memory token and variety of possible combinations of the aforementioned devices and tokens. All of these devices share the commonality that consumer are accustomed to carrying them with them most of the time and to most places. This is true across the various demographics and age groups regardless of the level of the sophistication of the consumer, their age group, their technical level or background.
These common handheld devices offer options for expandable memory. Micro Secure Digital (microSD) is the popular interface across high-end cellphones while SD and MultiMediaCard (MMC) interfaces are also available in limited models. MicroSD is the least common denominator supported by the majority of these devices and tokens (in terms of size). In addition, adaptors are available to convert a MicroSD into MiniSD, SD, MMC and USB Although most popular MP3 player (iPOD) offer's a proprietary interface, competing designs do offer standard interfaces. Digital cameras offer mostly SD and MMC while extreme Digital (xD) is another option. Micro and Mini versions of these interfaces are also available in several models. Mini-USB is increasingly available across cellphones, digital cameras and MP3 players for synchronization with laptops.
Various solutions exist for providing connectivity for PCs, mobile phones and PDAs to wide area wireless broadband networks. Unlike Wi-Fi, wide area wireless broadband networks use spectrum licensed by a service provider. In order to provide access, the broadband service providers charge an access fee. In the case of consumer devices such as mobile phones and PDAs, the hardware to access the broadband network is typically embedded into the device. In order to secure access and prevent multiple users from sharing the access provided in exchange for the fee, the service provider uses either specially designed software resident on the device that is accessing the network or a removable security token such as the SIM card.
In the case of the PC, these solutions comprise of a hardware modem that can be added to the PC using peripheral interfaces such as USB, PCMCIA, PCIA or mini-PCI (and others). To control access, either a connection manager software is provided by the service provider that authenticates a user using user-id and password and/or a more secure authentication software is used (such as X.509 certificates). This software is typically installed on the PC together with the access driver for the hardware. In some options, the default connection manager provided by the operating system of the PC (such as Windows XP/Vista/MacOS etc.) can be used. In this case, the user is asked to provide his user id and password.
There are other consumer devices such as cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, game players and portable video players that may require broadband internet connection for useful applications. These devices have proprietary operating systems that cannot be expanded easily by installing device drivers. Furthermore, these devices may lack a user interface and keyboard for the user to provide a username and password for authentication. In addition, these devices also lack PCMCIA or USB type expansion slots where broadband modem hardware could be inserted. These devices also typically lack the slot for a hardware security token such as a SIM card in order to provide secure access to a fee based wireless broadband service provider. These devices also need memory for the users to store content captured through these devices. The need for such memory is growing at a rapid rate.